


Anything Else, Ms. Lupo?

by Nell65



Series: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back [3]
Category: Eureka
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:43:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1680293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65/pseuds/Nell65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This started as porn. Just porn. It grew into something a little bit more. It's still mostly porn.</p><p>"Anything else, Ms. Lupo?" he asked.</p><p>Tag for episode 4.14, <i>Up in the Air</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything Else, Ms. Lupo?

~~~~

“Last call, people. Time to clear out and let us clean up!” 

Vincent stood near the swinging door to Café Diem’s kitchen, rattling a wooden spoon in a metal bowl.

Jo raised her eyes from the tablet to look at Zane, who was sitting next to her at the far counter. She raised her eyebrows.

He shook his head. “You can finish this last problem before we go. You’re more than half done already.”

Every single whiny thing she’d ever said about middle school homework echoed in her ears. ‘I’m tired!’ ‘This is stupid!’ ‘Why do I have to do this?’

Her inner twelve year old must have leaked into her expression. Zane cocked his head at her, considering, then shifted on his stool to face her, leaning closer and dropping his voice to say lightly, “We’re friends, right?”

There was something crafty glinting in his eye. She nodded warily. “Right.”

“The kind of friends that come with extra benefits, yeah?”

He put his hand on her leg as he spoke, just above her knee. He emphasized the ‘benefits’ he was talking about by wrapping his fingers around to press gently at what he damn well knew was a trigger spot for her. 

The sparks ran right to her belly, then burst up toward her breasts and all the way down to the tops of her thighs. 

Her faint tremor was barely noticeable, though, she was sure. One glance at his smug little grin and she knew he noticed it.

She narrowed her eyes, ignoring a powerful urge to cross her legs. She refused to give him the satisfaction. She tossed her head and shrugged dismissively. “Sometimes.”

More like, two nights out of three, not counting the odd mid-day hookup. Which she absolutely was not.

He was laughing at her, with his eyes. With his mouth he said, “Finish this last problem and you can cash in all sorts of extra benefits tonight.”

“What if I don’t want too?” 

It was a weak line. The weakest. He’d felt her flinch. And she hadn’t removed his hand.

He leaned still closer, his thumb stroking along her knee, his voice a low burr against her ear, all confidence and sass. “You want too, Jojo.”

He was so damn tempting. She wanted press her mouth to his, suck his full lower lip between her teeth and bite down, hard enough to make him jerk, not so hard as to make him jerk away.

Thought blurred into action and she was already in motion when he sat back abruptly. Smirking. God, he could be such an ass.

“After you finish this last problem.” He tapped the pad, all serious business again. “You’re less than three steps from the solution.”

She turned back to the wretched, horrid math problem, trying, as she scowled at the stupid, uncooperative numbers, to decide which would be more likely to preserve her dignity. Leave with him? Leave without him? Sneak out? Run screaming?

Was the remote possibility of her making the cut for the Astreaus crew really worth all of this… whatever it was?

A few minutes later Zane took her elbow as Vincent waved them, along with the last of the stragglers, out of Café Diem. His voice low and triumphant and full of promise against her ear, “I knew you had it in you.”

She wanted to make him wait for it. Make him beg. Extra benefits. Ha. Who benefited, exactly, and from what?

She wanted to run. Far, far away from all his damn… Zane-ness. Stupid bad-boy felon. With impressive musculature and stamina. 

She flashed on an image of them naked, twisting together, their skin slick with sweat, breathing harsh with effort. She had no idea if it was memory or a daydream. She ached with desire either way. 

His hand slid around to her back and she discovered she was already walking toward his car. 

So she folded her arms and harrumphed instead. But she didn’t move away and she didn’t shrug off his hand and she didn’t change directions.

Even his answering ‘mmhmm’ sounded smug. He added, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

She wanted to say ‘no.’ Just because.

She wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard him.

She wanted to get naked as fast as possible so she didn’t have to think about it any longer.

When he opened the passenger door, she slid right in, already calculating the hours until she’d have to wake him up to get out of his apartment in time to pick up her car before dawn.

They didn’t talk on the short drive. Zane because he’d learned she got snippy if he took his concentration off the road. Her because being ignominiously defeated by her own lust wasn’t offering her much in the way of clever conversational fodder. 

She declined his offer of a drink. She’d had so much water and tea at Café Diem she was going to be up half the night peeing as it was. She marched straight back to his bedroom, pulling off her jacket and tugging off her boots as she went. 

He detoured through the bathroom and the kitchen.

Extra benefits. She wanted them all. She’d earned them. Stupid math. Stupid, bad-boy, genius, no-fly felon. Who thought she was smart. Smart enough he could teach her what she needed to know to be an astronaut. Smart enough to be an astronaut from Eureka.

~~~~

Jo stood in front of the big, full-length mirror Zane had propped against the wall opposite his bed. For checking his form while lifting free weights from the rack he kept next to it, he claimed. For a lot of things, she’d learned.

She’d begun ramping up her own workouts as soon as she’d been put in charge of the physical training and evaluation of the Astreaus candidates. Almost two months ago.

So, now? In nothing but her bra and panties, a matched set, black for her, satin and lace for him, she looked good. Seriously, freaking good. 

She tugged out her ponytail holder and shook her hair free, fluffing it with her fingers, arranging it over her shoulders for the best effect and striking a pose.

Friends with benefits, indeed. 

Oh, who in the hell was she kidding? 

Besides herself. Obviously.

She hadn’t needed to change out of her sensible workout bra and briefs when she got back to GD earlier today. Her time at the park had mostly been spent walking around barking orders at the more noodle-like of the candidates, the few exercises she’d actually led directly hardly enough to break a sweat. 

She certainly hadn’t needed to put on quite such an elaborate set of underwear even if she had wanted fresh things. Except. She had. Because she’d been almost completely certain that he’d see it. He still, always, liked to see her in pretty, femme lingerie. 

She just hadn’t realized that he’d pitch her headlong into a confusing pit of exhilarated appreciation and jumbled regrets first. 

Old Zane had never once told her he thought she was smart, smart enough to learn something as mathematically demanding, as science-y, as orbital dynamics. On the contrary, more than once he’d managed to make her feel really stupid and ill educated. He never meant too, and he always offered a sincerely heartfelt apology, after he figured out what he’d done, but the sting didn’t go away.

He knew she was capable and clever and good at her job. He respected her as a professional when she was in uniform. Her insecurities actually baffled him. He loved her. He wanted to marry her and spend the rest of his life with her.

But he’d never once said she was smart enough to compete with the best of GD’s scientists. 

Until tonight. Tonight, new Zane, who was old Zane with different memories, told her she was smart. He said it. Out loud. Less than three hours ago. Not that he thought that she was smart, but that she was smart. A statement of fact, not an opinion. 

She was smart, he’d said. Plenty smart enough to tackle the advanced math she’d need to compete for a slot on the Astreaus mission. That he wanted to help her realize that dream. He’d actually said that. And her whole damn body had thrilled at his praise.

He overrode her objections. Insisted he could teach her what she needed to know. Pulled out the math sets he’d prepared and showed her that she could work her way through them. Was perilously close to convincing her that she really had what it took to win a berth on the Astreaus crew. 

“Every ship needs a pilot and a navigator, right?” he’d said, when she’d gotten frustrated with the third problem and told him it was a lost cause. She was a lost cause. Her insecurities insisting on dying a drawn-out, operatic death.

Piloting a space ship. She could imagine doing that. Felt a faint tremor of excitement when she did. She’d seen the design specs. For the Astreaus and the mission rovers. Piloting those would be really pretty fucking awesome. 

Once she refocused on the math as descriptions of moving a three-dimensional object through orbital space, like, say, piloting a high altitude satellite, or a space ship breaking orbit, well. They got, not easier, exactly, but clearer. Less nonsense symbols and more a useful tool for navigation. Like using calculus to target a missile, which had turned abstract squiggles into meaningful math for her years ago.

“See?” he’d crowed, “Flying is physics and you already think like a pilot. This is just piloting a bigger ship flying further from a planet.”

How could the Zane who loved her, wanted to marry her, who said she was perfect just as she was, also be the Zane who thought less of her intellectual abilities? 

How could the Zane who definitely did not love her, who joked about her being on another planet a billion miles away so she couldn’t bust him for his pranks, think so much better of her? Of what she could do and who she could be?

That she could pilot a space ship. For real. 

“Don’t panic,” he’d said. “You can do this.”

~~~~

He cleared his throat.

He was leaning against the doorframe, watching her admire herself in her pretty, satin underwear. His expression a curious mix of longing, anticipation, desire and, definitely, mirth. Her vanity amused him as much as being teased about his own irritated him.

She turned to look at him, clasping her hands behind her back. Mostly to keep from crossing her arms defensively across her chest. The whole purpose of this getup was for him to admire her. No point if she covered up in shyness. She raised her brow. “Yes?”

An odd expression she couldn’t quite decipher flickered across his face. Then he dropped to his knees in front of her. 

Leaning back into his heels, he looked up and drawled, “Anything else, Ms. Lupo?”

Her heart nearly skipped a beat, then started pounding, blood rushing in her ears so loud she could barely hear herself think. Not that she was thinking much beyond, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, holy fuck.’ 

This morning. This was the same way he’d knelt at her feet. This was the same thing he’d said. Asking her to raise the bar, so he could clear it again. The same gleeful confidence. The same damn subtext now made text. 

On his knees in front of her, patient, willing, daring her to make any demand she could dream up.

How the hell did he manage to make submission so full of sexual challenge, anyway? With his lazy drawl, just this side of a taunt? In the way he raked his gaze across her body, his tongue darting out to lick his lips as he dragged his eyes back up to hers?

It was also strongly reminiscent of a whole lot of bad, boot-camp-themed porn she’d watched in an early effort to be one of the guys.

There was no way he hadn’t spotted that, too.

She was so keyed up already it was on the tip of her tongue to snap, ‘just fuck me you idiot.’

But.

That would be easy. And he would do it. With gusto. He was already getting hard, his open kneed pose, as he knelt at her feet, clearly revealing the bulge in his jeans.

But there would be that fraction of a fraction of a second, time that would hang unmoving and unforgiving in her memory, when disappointment filled his eyes.

She wished she’d asked for a glass of water after all. Her throat felt unaccountably dry.

~~~~

If only he hadn’t burned down her house. Because there was no way she was going to go full drill sergeant when the wall between his bedroom and his neighbor’s was nowhere near as thick as it should be.

Then her brain finally restarted and she remembered that volume and command weren’t the same thing. She could do quiet orders. 

She raised her chin, the better to enjoy looking down her nose at him, on his knees, at her feet. “Take off your flannel and your jeans.”

His triumphant grin was nearly blinding. And full of promise. If her pretty satin panties hadn’t been damp before, they definitely were now.

“Yes ma’am.”

Stripped down to his snug black tee-shirt and black boxer briefs, he stood in front of her, bare toes on an imaginary line. Willing and eager and definitely, she dropped her gaze to his tented briefs, ready to play.

He’d also worked out for about four hours this morning, and she had no interest in tiring him out too soon. No matter how monumentally, if fleetingly, tempting it was to grind the smirk off his face and play nothing but denial games.

“Drop and give me twenty pushups.” She paused for a beat, then added, “Cupcake.”

His smirk got wider. She narrowed her eyes. There was certainly no reason to make it too easy.

He dropped, starting in fast and quick.

“Slow down,” she snapped. “Make it a three count down, one count up. And,” she lifted her foot and hooked her painted toenails under his hip bone to prod his pelvis up, “watch your form, Donovan. It’s sloppy. Don’t sag. Head level with your back. Elbows in.”

Then she dropped to her own knees, well inside his range of vision, sat back on her own heels and started counting, ensuring he couldn’t speed up and let momentum carry him through. 

If she kept her back slightly arched and her abs tight while she did, well, core work was core work, right? If it also happened to present a fantastic and eye-level view of her boobs when his arms were fully extended, well. Double-plus good.

Anyway, her position offered her a lovely perspective of said arms. And his ass. And his legs.

Old Zane had been just as eager to please her in the bedroom, but he would not have found this form of play in the least bit fun. He hadn’t worked out at all when they first got together. His skinniness still the effortless result of youth and a few years on the run from the FBI. A more sedentary lifestyle and full access to Vincent’s cooking and the predictable weight gain later, he’d grudgingly adopted running and a semi-regular circuit through the weight machines at GD’s gym. He liked the results, but he didn’t particularly enjoy the exercise itself.

New Zane, vain creature that he was, understood just how good he looked. Knew exactly what the effect was. On people in general and on her in particular. Clearly found the payoff worth the considerable effort involved. He also liked the workout on its own terms. She’d watched him, covertly and sitting right here in his bedroom, while he lifted. Even when he knew she was there, and couldn’t help showing off at first, he’d eventually tune her out. Sinking into the exercise, he’d take on the same expression of concentrated meditation he had when he was wrestling with a line of code or a complex equation.

Even now, by his sixth rep, he’d quit glancing over at her. She watched him fall deeper and deeper into his own body and his form, definitely a bit rough to begin with, improved noticeably. His back got flatter, he deepened the tuck in his pelvis and got closer to the floor with each new drop.

She had no intention of telling him just how hot she found this. At least, not any time soon.

“Twenty,” she said at last, standing back up.

He sat back on his heels and looked up at her, breathing a little harder, cocky grin firmly in place.

“Ten ab crunches,” she said.

“Ten?” he asked, raising a dismissive brow.

“Ten. Up on three, center, right, center, left, center, down on three. Full stops in the center. No momentum.”

“Ten,” he nodded, mollified, and shifted onto his back.

“Sit on my feet?” he asked, with a leer.

“No. And keep your feet on the ground.”

She sat on the bed instead. Leaning back on her hands and crossing her legs. Reminding him again what he was working for. “I’ll count the reps. You set your own pace. Just don’t go too fast.”

~~~~

By his second set she realized she’d forgotten to have him take his shirt off, so she wasn’t able to see his abs. But the smoothness of his effort was a pleasure to observe all the same.

As he was finishing his last rep, she stood up. As his head came to rest on the carpet, she stepped over and straddled him, her ankles snug against his waist, holding him on his back, on the floor. She looked down. “Take off your shirt.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She definitely enjoyed the view of his abs contracting as he lifted his shoulders high enough to pull off his tee shirt.

Once he was looking back up at her, she ran her fingers inside the waistband of her panties, starting to push them down her hips. “Help me with these,” she said.

He sat up as he ran his hands up her legs, starting with her ankles and not forgetting to press just the right spot just above her knees. The electric charge skittered up her legs then lit up with a whump, deep in her groin, bunker-buster style. Her eyes fluttered and she hummed low in her throat.

He hooked his fingers inside the bottom edge of her panties and pulled down, slowly, the lace tickling her skin. Her blood fell southward so fast she actually swayed. 

She lifted one foot and then the other, as he tapped each ankle in turn, resting her fingers in his hair for balance. Though her panties offered only minimal coverage, the air rushing in against her skin felt dramatically cool and she felt far more naked now than a moment ago. 

Once he tossed them aside, he wrapped his large, warm hands around her calves and peered up at her again. “What now, Ms. Lupo?”

She pushed lightly at his shoulders, urging him back down to the floor, following the movement of his body by sinking slowly to her knees until she was kneeling over him, her feet against his hips, cradling his torso with her calves, her knees up under his arms.

“Make me come,” she said.

Someone, someone not her in this timeline, had taught him not to rush. To let his partner lead the way, tell him when she wanted more pressure and more speed.

He’d also learned a thing or two about her specifically.

Like, one of the reasons she didn’t want to shave herself bare was just for this. He wrapped one hand around the back of her thigh and gently brushed the knuckles of his other hand just across the tips of her pubes. For her, it was like each strand was an exposed nerve ending, individually hot-wired straight to her clit. A cascade of tiny sparks made her shudder and hiss, which made him grin and wink at her. 

“Benefits, Jo.”

She should have responded to this role break, but his fingers were moving, stroking and tugging, and she didn’t have any more attention for banter. Or long words. Nothing more than, “yes. Yes. Just like that.”

He slipped his hand between her legs, running his blunt nails against her inner thighs. He worked his way to her center and once his fingers were wet with her, dragged them forward to circle around her clit. Again and again until her hips started to move, following the direction of his fingers. When her hips were thrusting faster, he pressed his thumbs into her cunt, parting her labia and pulling himself up to lick along the inside of her skin, teasing her with his tongue. 

Her eyelids drifted closed and she arched closer to him, her hands fluttering for a grip on something. On anything. She settled on her own tits, applying the pressure his hands were too busy to offer. His hands were full of her ass. His fingers digging in as he held himself close, a sharp counterpoint to his tongue, so busy with tiny, tickling flutters and longer, slower, firmer strokes. 

With moans and breathy sighs she urged him on.

Wet heat pooled between her legs. Sweat started to bead at her temples, under her arms, along the nape of her neck, in the hollow between her breasts. A thin line rolled down her back, coming to rest in the curve of her spine, just above her ass.

The dense heat of her future orgasm continued to grow, spreading into her thighs and up into her belly and her lower back. The muscles in her legs and her abs and her ass grew tense with it. Her clit was throbbing with it. 

She wanted, needed, to move but she was trapped between his hands and his mouth. Her legs actually started to tremble as her hips strained for motion while he held her still. Her body was beginning to jerk uncontrollably in his hands.

His grip got stronger and he pulled closer and suddenly the pressure from his tongue was too much, her cresting orgasm slipping back as he pushed too aggressively, smashing her clit against the bone behind it. She dropped her hands to his head, catching her fingers in his hair and jerking sharply. “Ouch,” she hissed. “Too hard.”

He pulled away, kissed her thighs, then wrapped his arms around her hips, lifting and twisting to flip their positions. Once she was on the floor, on her back, he coiled over her, dropping kisses up her belly, along her shoulders, raising his head to kiss her firmly on the mouth. 

She pressed up into the kiss only to have him pull away, working his way down as he wiggled backward, settling in between her legs. His whole attention given over to making her quiver and sigh. He recovered the pressure and rhythm with his tongue that would drive her right back to the edge, one long finger, then two pressed deep inside her, seeking and finding just the right places and pressure, heavy and full. She flung her arms out, trying to find something, anything to grip, help her push the tension higher. Her fingers closed around something fuzzy, a discarded sock, maybe, and the soft cotton of his tee shirt. His mouth hot and wet, his flickering tongue at the center of her world. Encouragement and commands spilled from her lips and her whole body rocked in his hands.

Then she had no words, just faint cries leaking around her bottom lip as she bit down to keep from startling the neighbors. And then it all burst, rolling over her, her abs contracting so hard her own shoulders came high off the ground.

It was only when she sagged back against the carpet that she realized he’d placed her so she could see her own face in the mirror. If she turned her head that way. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright under drooping lids, her lips swollen from her own teeth. 

Then he pressed his tongue flat against her clit, and her whole body shuddered once more. She watched it and felt it, and felt herself respond to watching herself. He did it again and then again, drawing out the last of her orgasms until she finally she had to whimper, “Okay. Stop. Enough.”

He nuzzled at her inner thighs, scraping her skin with his short beard to make her shiver, then crawled up next her. He settled himself mostly to her side once his head was level with hers. Pressing close, half leaning onto her so she could feel the hard length of his cock through his boxers, a wet spot testimony to how close to getting off he could get, just by making her come. 

He drew his hand up her belly, drawing slow patterns on her skin, giving her time to recover. At last his fingers reached her still satin clad breasts. “Pretty bra,” he said. “Is it new?”

“Nearly everything of mine is new,” she reminded him, brows raised, tone as arid as she could make it given her overwhelming sense of satisfied well-being.

He raised his own brows right back at her, his tone teasing, “Really? Three months later?”

Ass. She wanted to tell him not to flatter himself. But they both knew that would be a lie. “Just kiss me, you idiot,” she said, softening the insult into endearment with her voice and her fingers on his cheek.

“As soon as we’re in bed.”

He rolled to his feet and offered her his hand, pulling her up and after him.

~~~~

He quickly skimmed off his boxers, then stepped close and slipped his fingers under the thin straps of her bra. “Time to take this off, too.”

They half crawled, half fell into the mattress, curling into each other as soon as they kicked the blankets out of the way. She pushed until he was on his back and she could focus on him, running her hands and her lips along his arms and his chest, at last able to touch everything she’d been admiring one way or another for half the day. 

She kissed her way down from his throat to his abs, past his obliques to the soft skin just below his hipbones. His skin was warm and smelled of sex, of him and her, their sweat and musk mingled, familiar and erotic. She pressed her cheek against his stomach, pausing to simply breathe him in. After a moment, or three, she turned her head to brush his skin with the tip of her nose, then gently retraced the ridges of the abs he was so proud of with the tip of her tongue. The firm muscles beginning, ever so faintly, to quiver under her touch. She deliberately left his very erect cock alone, teasing everywhere but there. Soon enough his back was arching, his hips straining up, and he was humming low in his chest. Which was when she bent her head to draw her tongue along the underside of his cock from his balls to the tip, grinning to herself when she heard his long, drawn-out hiss.

She didn’t linger very long. He liked a blowjob just as much as most men did, but he’d put himself in her hands and she wanted him inside her. She kissed her way back up to his shoulder, the hollow of his neck and then his mouth again. 

She loved kissing him, being kissed by him. Loved the way he wrapped his arms around her, held her so tightly, like he really never wanted to let her go, his own hands roaming her body as eagerly as hers did his. He caught her waist and pulled her further up, until he could get his mouth on her breasts, tongue and teeth worrying her nipples while she braced her arms against the wall, her hips beginning to rock again.

Eventually she shifted her weight off and beside him, slipping down to face him and reaching between them for his cock while she kissed him again. Wrapping her fingers around it, thick and rigid, she pumped slowly while he groaned wordless encouragement against her mouth. 

When his voice switched from guttural to breathy, she responded by playing her thumb across the tip, swirling the wetness there down and around and back again. By then his fingers were dipping deep inside her, stroking and scissoring until her clit was aching and she was whimpering in impatience. Another minute more and he twisted away from her, fumbling in the drawer for a condom.

She watched him, her legs already splayed wide, as he rose up on his knees and rolled the condom down, settling it firmly at the base and tugging at the tip. 

She tried to appreciate this as much as she had two months ago, but somehow that thin barrier of latex had come to represent all the conversations they weren’t having. Conversations about what they were doing. About the future. About keeping a toothbrush at his place for nights like this. About did he really want her to be a billion miles away from him for six months. About what exactly, if anything, was the difference was between being friends with benefits who didn’t actually sleep with anyone else or spend time with anyone else and dating – other than all the conversations they weren’t having. 

But she was afraid of what she’d learn. Afraid of what she’d blurt out. Hurting his feelings by pushing him away. Scarring him off by going to fast. All the options sucked. 

So she just silently resented the condoms instead.

Then he was falling back on top of her, catching himself just before he crushed her. She kissed him again while he adjusted her leg and drove hard inside her, filling her up, overwhelming her senses. There was nothing else she could do or think except to urge him on. He rolled his hips as he thrust and she rose to meet him, shifting, angling herself to bring him deeper inside her with every stroke. Across his shoulders his skin under her hands prickled with damp heat. Her breasts and belly grew slick with sweat as they twisted together. Dark warmth filled her until nothing was left but her body, her body and his.

In the end, excellent stamina notwithstanding, he came before she did. She held him throughout his climax, her legs tight around his waist, her fingers in his hair, her face buried in the crook of his neck, her lips closed fast against any emotional outburst that would spoil the moment. 

He rolled off her as soon as he could, replacing his cock with his fingers and in less than a minute more she came with a sharp cry. Again. 

When she settled back at last, her well-used cunt throbbing gently in a friendly sort of way, her post-orgasmic languor was too heavy to fight. She didn’t have the energy to roll to her side, find a blanket or even a pillow. She just lay there, forearm over her eyes and legs akimbo and waited. She was still there when he came back to the bed, turning out the lights, pulling up the blankets, adjusting the pillows and then moving her around like a ragdoll until he had her spooned firmly against him, his arm anchoring her in place.

When the haze finally lifted, maybe even after she’d dozed off for a time, she realized she really, really had to pee.

Her struggle to kick free from the blankets he’d tucked around her woke him enough tighten his embrace and mumble pleadingly, “Stop. Don’t make me get up and take you to your car. Please, babe. Just go to sleep.”

She assured him she was just going to the bathroom, but once she was finally on her feet, she also reminded him that they would be waking up at four thirty. “So you can take me to my car before it gets light.”

“Why can’t we wake up at a normal time? Who cares who sees your car?” he asked, his sleepy voice teetering dangerously close to a whine.

She did. She cared a lot. People had to know about their…friendship, but she didn’t have any need to parade it about. Not until she had a better idea of what it was exactly they were doing, anyway. Until then, news of their hook ups weren’t really a thing she wanted zipping through Vincent’s gossip network. Any more than they undoubtedly already were zipping through his network. Eureka was a really small, one-company town.

She folded her arms. “You can take me now if you’d rather.”

He flopped onto his back, opened his eyes and scowled at her through the shadowed room. After a moment he said, “Whatever you say, Jojo.” 

Then he rolled away from her, settling onto his side and into a more comfortable position.

Amazing how he could use those four simple words to convey so many different things. Right now, for example, he meant, ‘I have no intention of cooperating AND I have no intention of arguing with you about it either.’ All his submissive obedience vanished in his pursuit of an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

His eyes were already closed and his breathing was slowing down so he didn’t see or respond to her glare.

He’d be snoring by the time she finished in the bathroom.

She sighed, then stooped to pull a clean tee shirt and a pair of socks out of his dresser drawer. Four thirty would become five would become six and then he’d wheedle her into staying in bed just a little longer, and then it would be barely enough time to rush back to SARAH and change for the day. In the meantime, if she wasn’t wearing something she’d wake up freezing.

Benefits. 

Ha.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first of these I wrote. I was planing on a simple little PWP. That's all. Nothing else. But the inspiration came directly from this episode, and while I was writing, it grew into something just a little more. Which led to the others. And here I am.
> 
>  
> 
> _9/21/2014 edited to add_ : I can't help tinkering sometimes, so if you happen to be a return reader with a good eye, yes. I've made some minor changes.


End file.
